Explore the rich terrain of American popular music with the most complete, colorful, and authoritative introduction of its kind. In the fifth edition of their best-selling text, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman provide a unique combination of cultural and social history with the analytical study of musical styles.

Surveys the history of all categories of American popular music from colonial times to the present, with information on the music, composers, performers, and entrepreneurs.

Appell (jazz studies, Diablo Valley College) and Hemphill (graduate studies, research, and development, San Francisco State University) offer a textbook for popular music, humanities, or cultural studies courses, organized by the musical influences of particular cultural groups--African American, European American, Latin, Native American and Asian--rather than a strict chronological approach. This is followed by a section tracing modern jazz to hip hop. They survey a broad range of styles, from minstrelsy, blues, hymns, and wind bands to Chicano music, Afro-Caribbean music, bebop, acid jazz, girl groups, folk-rock, the British invasion, R&B, and rock.

Presents brief entries covering the history, significant artists, styles and influence of folk music.